modern family season 3

Poor Gloria. She feels like no one ever wants her to help with anything, which is weird because she has all the answers. She certainly has some of the best stories, as she proved with her beauty pageant tale to inspire Claire this week on 'Modern Family' (Wed., 9PM ET on ABC).

Doing so helped her out as well, as Claire turned around and advised Jay to give Gloria a shot at helping him out with his problem at work. The problem is that he's having trouble getting a new young hotshot CEO into his closet design. The guy wants to be wowed without having any idea what that means. Meanwhile, Jay works in the real world.

Gloria was feeling a little jealous this week on 'Modern Family' (Wed., 9PM ET on ABC). But it wasn't another woman that was stoking the fires, but rather a dog. The dog was in bed with them, and even in the shower with Jay at one point.

To make matters worse, she caught the dog chewing on her shoes at one point, so in an attempt to get Jay mad at the dog, she tried to convince it to chew up one of his shoes. Only the dog wasn't going for it, so Gloria got down on her knees to show the pooch how it's done.

At this point, of course, Jay and Manny showed up in the doorway. Gloria's face after Jay said, "Drop it," and she did obediently, was one of the funniest moments in the entire episode.

'Modern Family' (Wed., 9PM ET on ABC) kicked off its third season by taking the extended family to a dude ranch. Even Dylan came along, which made Hayley happy, but caused huge amounts of stress for Claire.

This culminated in her most terrified moment around the campfire when Dylan got down on one knee to propose to Hayley. Before he could even finish, Claire stopped him dead in his tracks and essentially scolded the both of them and sent Dylan to his room.

As she learned later, though, Hayley wasn't going to say yes to Dylan anyway. Claire just needed to understand that she was growing up, which turned out to be a theme of the episode. Only Luke seems to still be just as delightfully boyish as ever. Let's face it, Manny was never really a kid.

'Modern Family' cleaned up at the Emmys last night, winning five big awards, and hearing their hilarious acceptance speeches made me even more excited for Season 3 (premieres Wed., Sept. 21, 9PM ET on ABC).

I've missed the Pritchett-Dunphy clan, and I can't wait to see them saddle up at a dude ranch. But I'm also excited to see new Lily in action, and to watch Cam and Mitchell go through the process of expanding their family even more with trying to adopt another child.

We've got an exclusive sneak peek at the big one-hour season premiere, featuring new Lily (Aubrey Anderson-Emmons) -- all grown up and full of funny expressions -- spending a day with daddy Cam (Eric Stonestreet).

So is Cam really coddling Lily? One look at her attachment to him, even when he's showering, says it all. She doesn't speak here in this clip, but she does make a little noise of approval. And now, after watching it, so am I.

Family gatherings can be quite a circus, that's for sure. 'Modern Family' is taking that thought one step further with this new cast image.

The Season 3 cast picture features the gang dressed in classic circus attire -- there's even an animal in the mix! Each person is dressed like a specific circus character.

Last year's photo had the cast hanging out in vintage beach attire.

The new season kicks off with a 1-hour premiere that sees the Dunphy and Pritchett families heading to Jackson Hole, Wyoming for a dude ranch adventure. ABC promises big firsts, surprises and a face-off!

Check out a full gallery of ABC's new portraits -- including the new Lily, played by Aubrey Anderson-Emmons -- below.